8mm Tape & VHS to DVD

Transfer your precious VHS, 8mm, Hi8mm, or MiniDV tapes to DVD or AVI files.

History of VHS tapes

The Video Home System, better known by its abbreviation VHS, is a recording and playing standard for video cassette recorders (VCRs), developed by Victor Company of Japan, Limited, aka JVC, and launched in September 1976. There is a relatively popular belief that VHS officially stands for Video Home System. In fact it initially stood for Vertical Helical Scan, after the relative head/tape scan technique (making the popular version a backronym), some actually believe that it once stood for Video Head Set, due to the way the cassette's magnetic strip is read with a silver read head.[1]

By the 1990s, VHS became a standard format for consumer recording and viewing, after competing in a fierce format war with Sony Corporation's Betamax and, to a lesser extent, Philips' Video 2000. VHS initially offered a longer playing time than the Betamax system, and it also had the advantage of a far less complex tape transport mechanism. Although VHS and Betamax were competing formats, several of VHS' critical technology are licensed from Sony. Early VHS machines could rewind and fast forward the tape considerably faster than a Betamax VCR since they unthreaded the tape from the playback heads before commencing any high-speed winding. Most newer VHS machines do not perform this unthreading step, as head-tape contact is no longer an impediment to fast winding, due to improved engineering.

The week of 15 June 2003 marked the first time the DVD format (which was launched in the late 1990s) became more popular than VHS in the USA. Although still popular with home recording, the VHS tape has largely been replaced by DVD.

As of July, 2006 most studios have stopped releasing movies in VHS format, opting for DVD-only releases. VHS prerecorded movies, however, are still popular with many collectors.